Nancy Hoshaw survived a heart attack at 48 and breast cancer at 60. At 73, she’s entering the CrossFit Games Open, which kicked off Feb. 25. While some compete to be named Fittest on Earth, Hoshaw is competing with time and age—and she’s winning.

After seeing decrepit women on a trip to Israel, Hoshaw decided a slow slide into a retirement home wasn’t for her.

“My goal is to stay healthy and independent. I cherish my independence,” she says.

Her coach at CrossFit Bay Area in Webster, Texas, is two-time CrossFit Games athlete Jordan Cook. Cook describes CrossFit as a lifestyle, noting how the community keeps people active and energized while they preserve and improve function.

“The whole point of functional fitness is not just to get better at fitness but to help us in our everyday life,” Cook explains.

While Hoshaw was dead set against doing the Open last year, she’s all in for 2016. When Cook shared an Instagram video of Hoshaw preparing for the five-week competition about a month ago, she inspired people around the world and found more motivation herself.

“I feel like I can encourage other people, but at the same time I’m encouraged myself,” she says.

Some know him as a coach, some as “the man in the short shorts.” Others know him as the winner of the fourth season of Maximum Warrior, a reality-TV competition for people with military… Continue Reading

The CrossFit Journal is a chronicle of the empirically driven, clinically tested, and community developed CrossFit program. Our mission is to provide a venue for contributing coaches, trainers, athletes, and researchers to ponder, study, debate, and define fitness and collectively advance the art and science of optimizing human performance.